Bill Would Promote New Shooting Ranges: The expansion of America’s urban and suburban areas has crowded out many shooting areas and made it increasingly difficult to find a place to shoot. On September 24, 2009, Senators Mark Udall (D-Colo.) and James Risch (R-Idaho) introduced S. 1702, a bill that would help remedy this problem by promoting the construction and maintenance of target ranges on public lands. The bill would amend the Pittman-Robertson Act, a 70-year-old federal law that uses federal excise taxes on firearms and ammunition to fund wildlife conservation programs and the construction of shooting ranges. The bill’s improvements to the Pittman-Robertson Act would allow the states far greater ability to purchase land, build new target ranges, and improve the ranges that currently exist. Currently, Pittman-Robertson only allows the federal government to use these funds to pay 75 percent of the cost of building or maintaining a range. S. 1702 would change the funding requirements under Pittman–Robertson to allow the federal government to finance up to 90 percent of target range construction and maintenance with Pittman Robertson funds…